From the category archives:

Numbers

Results: Energy Tax Credit Toward New Efficient Central Air Unit is Surprisingly…Inefficient

Last month, I shared my analysis on my considerations for taking advantage of the Energy Tax Credit and getting 30% off the cost of a new Central Air Unit since our house if 15 years old and we’ll eventually need one anyway. Well, there are various ways to look at large purchases like this, ranging [...]

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PEG Ratio: Why It’s More Relevant than P/E for Stocks

While many individual investors are familiar with the conventional Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio, the PEG ratio isn’t cited nearly as often but it really puts a stock’s valuation in the proper context. While a P/E ratio will tell you whether a stock is “highly priced” just based on a forward earnings expectations or trailing [...]

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The Crap We Buy Our Kids Equates to $100,000 at 21 Years Old

photo credit: Kate Penn | Bay City Times A buddy of mine mentioned an interview he saw with the author of a new book The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health-and a Vision for Change. The premise is that Americans spend way more time [...]

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If You’re Getting Ahead, isn’t Splitting Hairs Counter-Productive?

At the risk of contradicting some of my earlier posts when pointing out the optimal way to approach particular financial scenarios sometimes it’s best to instead say, “Just Tackle the Issue Regardless! Worry about details later“. When it comes to personal finances, if analysis paralysis sets in and you worry so much about finding the [...]

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How Does Society Value Additional Time for Your Dying Loved One?

There is an excellent article in this week’s BusinessWeek written by the widow of a man who fought a long and courageous battle with cancer. What differentiated this article from other similar accounts is that the article stepped through a very detailed financial account of just how costly it is to sustain a terminal patient [...]

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Bragging Rights – Have You Considered the Context?

I often hear people bragging about personal or company accomplishments with data. Data is truth, right? Well, it depends on how it’s presented – what the context is. Here are some examples: The CEO – I heard a CEO bragging on CNBC about a 60% return from the March lows so the company must be [...]

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What Are The Odds?

This guest post comes from Michael, a contributing editor of the Dough Roller,a personal finance and investing blog, and Credit Card Offers IQ, a credit card review site. I’m the type of guy that is always looking up to the sky after having something bad happen and wonder, Ã¢â‚¬Å“What are the chances that this happened [...]

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Study: Smart Investors MUCH Better Stock Pickers than Dumb Investors

I came across a neat research paper from UCLA and a few others universities seeking to address the topic of whether investors with a high IQ actually exhibit superior investment performance over others. This study strikes at the heart of the notion that stock picking is a random walk and no one investor can reasonably [...]

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The Gold-Dollar Correlation Explained and Why it Broke Down

Last week, I had posted on how the euphoric gold hype was really just a proxy for a weak dollar investment and there are more highly correlated and efficient means to exploit currency changes than buying an anachronistic, useless metal. Additionally, there’s talk of a dollar crisis and what it portends for commodity prices. When [...]

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